American politics

The Republican fringe

Gold-plated nonsense

ON CNBC early Friday, the topic was the Republican decision to set up a party committee to explore a return to the gold standard. The clips I've found of this discussion on the CNBC website (here and here) feature commentators appropriately noting that the idea is "ludicrous" (amusingly, the website's caption team has spelled it "ludacris"; someone younger than myself please insert an appropriate hip-hop-themed joke). But in the sequence I was watching on TV that didn't get picked up by the website, one of the channel's regulars (I didn't catch the name) said the attention was misplaced. The gold standard is "never going to happen", he said; it's "incredibly deflationary", the American government is never going to try to return to it, and the whole exploratory committee is just political tomfoolery we should all ignore in order to focus on real issues.

A short while later I found myself reading Dylan Matthews' exploration of the actual differences between the Romney-Ryan campaign's Medicare plans, and those of the Obama administration under the Affordable Care Act, aka Obamacare. Obamacare, he notes, cuts Medicare's payments to hospitals and other health-care providers by $716 billion. It then uses some of the money saved to expand coverage for non-retirees. At the same time, it eliminates the "doughnut hole" that currently leaves seniors liable for about $3,500 per year in prescription drug costs, waives Part B premiums for some preventive services, and institutes "a host of reforms to help Medicare learn how to pay for quality rather than for volume." Then he moves on to the Romney-Ryan campaign's plans.

So what about the Ryan plan? Well, it preserves the cuts in the Affordable Care Act, so it shores up the trust fund by an equivalent amount. But the Romney-Ryan campaign is now promising to reverse the ACA’s cuts, which would render the HI trust fund insolvent in 2016 rather than 2024.

For the sake of argument, though, suppose the ticket changed their mind on those cuts and implemented Ryan’s plan, as laid out in his proposed budget for 2013.

Well, maybe, for the sake of argument. But for the sake of evaluating the actual Republican ticket this year, how about we don't suppose that? How about we pay attention to what the campaign actually says it will do, rather than substituting other options which would be more reasonable? Mr Romney and Mr Ryan say they want to eliminate Obamacare's cuts in payments to health-care providers, and instead have the government pay those providers more money. Not only would that render the Medicare trust fund insolvent in 2016, it would raise premiums and co-payments for Medicare beneficiaries. As the New York Times' Jackie Calmes explained earlier this week, beneficiaries "share the cost of Medicare with the government. If Medicare’s costs increase—for instance, by raising payments to health care providers—so, too, do beneficiaries’ contributions."

For those reasons, Henry J. Aaron, an economist and a longtime health policy analyst at the Brookings Institution and the Institute of Medicine, called Mr. Romney’s vow to repeal the savings “both puzzling and bogus at the same time.”

Marilyn Moon, vice president and director of the health program at the American Institutes for Research, calculated that restoring the $716 billion in Medicare savings would increase premiums and co-payments for beneficiaries by $342 a year on average over the next decade; in 2022, the average increase would be $577.

I understand the dilemma faced by both Mr Matthews and that fellow on CNBC. The problem is that the things Republicans are advocating these days are often so off-the-wall that discussing them is simply not interesting. Paul Ryan's Medicare plan is terrible for all sorts of other reasons that are worth discussing, but the idea of rolling back Obamacare's cuts to Medicare reimbursements is one that doesn't even make sense; it gives away $716 billion in taxpayer money to health-care organisations who've said they're willing to give it up, speeds up the insolvency of the Medicare trust fund by eight years, and makes beneficiaries pay more. Austrian-style growth-through-austerity policies are a poor idea that has failed throughout Europe and Britain, but going a step further and bringing back the gold standard is just ridiculous, antediluvian, superstitious nonsense. Illegalising abortion is a bad idea, but criminalising abortion for rape victims and outlawing IVF by granting full legal rights to just-conceived embryos is such a terrible notion that it's scarcely interesting to debate it. And yet these are the actually existing proposals that are being pushed by actually existing Republicans in the actual presidential campaign we're involved in this year.

So, I actually DO read a lot of Economist articles, and you have no clue what you are talking about. The Economist's glowing coverage of Paul Ryan's absurdly dishonest excuse for a "budget plan" was just the latest of the many instances in which the paper has willfully turned a blind eye to Republican chicanery.

If you're going to make a stupid, partisan, overly simplistic assertion, at least make one that isn't so easily refutable.

Who cares whether Mitt Romney is sensible or serious? He has already displayed zero backbone for standing up to the loonier wings of the Republican Party.

The article is merely pointing out the elephant in the room: the GOP is proposing ideas so devoid of sanity that we have to assume they don't actually believe this nonsense and will behave differently if given power. That, good sir, is one hell of a leap of faith.

The wink and nod that Romney is still secretly flexible and moderate, and will break all his extremist election rhetoric as soon as he gets in office, gives me chills. Usually the people claiming that a politician is insincere and can't be trusted aren't simultaneously arguing this as a reason to vote *for* him.

"The problem is that the things Republicans are advocating these days are often so off-the-wall that discussing them is simply not interesting."

This perfectly expresses the stand-pattism that today smothers political discussion. Its fear of innovation reminds me of the little ditty my mother used to chant whenever I showed a lack of resolve:

"Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glenn
We daren't go a-hunting
For fear of Little Men!"

The GOP is, at the moment, the only source of ideas for a political system that is toxic from repeated infusions of the banal and routine. The Tea Party is the first serious third-party movement since LaFollette's 1924 Progressives and if it throws out a lot of bad ideas, at least it is willing to try something new. ("Above all, try something!" -- FDR)

It took 219 years (1790-2009) for the national debt to reach the level it had when Mr. Obama took office. It took him three years to increase it by fifty percent. This may have been necessary (I doubt it) but it is, if continued, potentially ruinous. Medicare is growing at an unsustainable level (it costs $50bn every year just to perform dialysis.) SS is slowly being defunded. The deficit equals ten percent of the GDP. Unemployment, using U-6, is around 16%. Heaven forbid that the GOP should present alternatives!

Is the Gold Standard a ridiculous idea? Perhaps. But, we went off it in 1971 and ten years later inflation topped 13%. The Gold Standard may be arbitrary and rigid in its effect on the money supply -- but, then, how long can we pull off this scam of simply printing money and pretending it is a store of value?

The middle-class is being hammered by an out-of-control educational system that imposes extortionate tuition and leaves young people in debt servitude for a generation. And, it doesn't do a particularly good job of preparing these same youngsters for life.

Older people who have worked for decades find that their reward is to have a lifetime of savings earn interest equal to about half of what the inflation rate currently is.

Is there anyone - other than the Democrats -who really thinks that everything is tickety-boo here in the Land of the Free?

The entitlement state has led to an under-class, largely minority, of tens of millions who sew not, neither do they spin -- but they DO collect welfare. And, they continue to supply the nation each year with millions of fatherless children who start off life behind the 8-ball.

The Democrats, like TE, are straight out of "Candide" - this is the best possible world. No need to make meaningful change. The lack of imagination, smugness and "I'm alright, Jack" attitude this reveals is contemptible.

Mr.Ryan,Mr. Paul and countless others may be completely wrong. But, their liberal opponents are so many mastadons that slowly sink, gigging, into a tarpit of stasis.

Maybe we need "off the wall" -- Americans are smart enough to sort out the good from the bad.

Do you really see no difference between FDR saying "Above all try something" in the middle of the Great Depression and your support of trying anything so long as its new while the economy is still functioning even if it is not in an ideal state? When you are at the bottom you can afford to try anything to get out. When you're on the edge, you don't want to start flailing around doing anything.

Also, if your view is that Democrats view everything as alright, then it should be said that Republicans view everything as having been alright in 1890. Is that any better a world-view? It should really be pointed out that both of these are hyperbolic. But hyperbole is not smug, so I guess it's alright.

I used to have clients on Medicare. Finding a podiatrist is easy, finding a neurologist borders on impossible. But worth pointing out, that particular problem predates ACA. We've been failing to get medicare funding right since the 60s. Either we get too much care and surplus capital funding mergers, acquisitions and construction of hospitals plus governorships f bald felons or we wind up with epileptics receiving Gold Bond and bag balm in lieu of serroquel.

Come on, if what we are trying to foresee what the candidates will do in office, you're better off throwing darts than listening to them. Compared to reading the platform, you're better off throwing the darts at your own eyeballs.

And just to point it out, Barak Obama ran on universal healthcare with no mandate.

If one were a bit cynical, one might suppose that unfunded Medicare Part D and plans to effectively render it insolvent as soon as possible were politically motivated to destroy through perceived ineptitude what could not be dissolved by cogent argument.

no, I was referring to how Paul Ryan's plan only applies to those of us under 55, which is weak sauce, not chili pepper. Conservatism is about what amounts to a tweak in how things are done for those under 55, and nothing ever changing at all for seniors.

Unfortunately, we also have to consider the ridiculous idea that doctors will provide care for less than cost, which everyone has told Obama will not work, because that idiotic conceit is in our law right now!

Where's the hyperinflation in the dollar? The Euro? Fiat currencies have done fine so far. Inflation is their natural trajectory, but hyperinflation has not been a problem. Just as journalists like to discuss policies that Republicans have not actually proposed because they seem more reasonable than the real thing, some people like to address problems that do not exist, just because they fit a monetary theory they like.

"That the government isn't going to be accurately determine compensation is basically a truism." Right, it is near impossible to buy as much in a market as the government does healthcare and not distort the costs. When medicare has been generous, it was much too generous and when it tried to be more niggardly it was way too cheap. I'm not sure there's any solution to that other than having the government stop buying healthcare directly (the Ryan plan,) single-payer (nobody's plan) or maybe buying really long contracts with doctors and hospitals so that they can save when the government hoses them down with money for when it doesn't.

The difference is that there are ways to suggest things change that would not require the destruction of parts of the government or extreme fiscal policies. Change is not an all or nothing movement. And, frankly, the conservative party should realize that change is something that ought to be implemented gradually, not in great leaps, given that that is the basis of conservative ideology.

I don't say that the Republicans are right -- no one knows if they are and that includes the Republicans. But, that party is suggesting that things cannot go on as they have and that the country needs to try something else.

If you are happy with the unemployment, funding of SS, the cost of Medicare, the tax structure, entitlements in general, the federal deficit, the effectiveness and cost of public education -- among other things -- then you will see no need to change.

"The ambitions of the two sides are, I think, more or less like the idea of matter and antimatter-- equal by definition."

I disagree with this part. I think if you believe, as I do, that both parties are increasingly unmoored from the American concensus, there's no reason to treat them anymore as left -2 or right +3. I think A. Andros' comment is constructive. Right now the GOP is talking madness and the Democrats are keeping mum and the two don't really oppose one another any more.

For example, I think in terms of government finance, you were right when one group of Keynesians wanted spending to influence the business cycle and the other group wanted taxes to influence the business cycle. But Austrians and Keynesians aren't diametrical in the same way.